Yeah, you heard that right.
Cloud hosting from Cloudways will cost you about the same as shared web hosting from Bluehost.
And it will be faster.
And it will cause less headaches.
And they won’t try to nickel-and-dime you every chance they get.
Maybe you’re here because you’re a Bluehost customer and you’re feeling exasperated and fed up. Or maybe you’re thinking about becoming a customer and you’ve seen their sweet intro deals that seem very cheap.
First they reel you in
As with all things, the devil is in the details.
You’ve probably seen those Bluehost ads that advertise a very low price to start hosting a website with them. Here’s an example, touting their very attractive $2.95 per month offer:
Seems pretty good right?
It’s about to get ugly. Buckle up.
Then the truth comes out
Once you click on the ad and go to their website, you’ll see that their lowest-tier package is indeed available at $2.95 per month, at least to start. Notice that it includes only 1 website, maximum. It includes a free domain, but you shouldn’t buy your domains through your web host anyway.
But wait, what’s this?
At the bottom, it says “Auto renews at regular rate”, and based on the info just above that, it seems it will be $10.99 per month at that point. That’s a heck of a jump!
Here come the up-sells you don’t need
If you click the blue “Select” button and move forward through the process, that’s when they hit you with the add-ons. Shocking, I know.
You shouldn’t have to pay extra for Domain Privacy. It comes free at the domain registrar that I recommend.
And they want $2.99 additional per month for site backups. Cloudways offers site backups for free, no additional charge. More details below.
So, to get the same features as Cloudways, you’d actually have to pay an extra $4 per month. Ugh.
Bitter former customers
I think a lot of their former customers would take exception to the “Best Web Hosting” message in the ad above, myself included. I was a Bluehost customer for years, and they were fine… until they weren’t.
Similar to many other web hosting companies like them, Bluehost started to hit me with a lot of random “You’ve gone over your limit” or “You need to upgrade your hosting plan.” I hadn’t changed anything, they just wanted more money from me. That got old.
Eventually I moved on, because Bluehost became more trouble & cost than it was worth. But you don’t have to take my word for it — there are a lot of people even more bitter about it than I am!
Here’s a sampling that I found in about 5 minutes from the expert Facebook groups and subreddits that I’m a part of:
So why do so many websites & people recommend Bluehost, then?
The answer is simple: they pay one of the best commissions for referring signups. If I was only about making tons of $$, I would refer you to Bluehost too. But I can’t do that in good conscience, because they suck.
So Bluehost gets recommended all over the web, largely because of their big payouts. Not because they’re the best (they’re not) and not because they offer the best deal (they don’t).
Evil shit, huh?
Cloudways costs the same, and it’s way faster
Look, instead of paying $11 per month to Bluehost for shared hosting, why not pay the same amount to Cloudways and get cloud hosting? It didn’t use to be possible, but it is now, thanks to Cloudways’ model. Take advantage of it, like most other people are doing!
Think about it this way. If you had a choice between a Toyota Tercel and a Lamborghini, and they cost the same amount, wouldn’t you pick the latter?
Especially if it’s going to be wayyyy faster. Because speed kills in a good way when it comes to web hosting. It’s the most important factor when choosing web hosting.
And choosing Cloudways is not going to make you claw out your eyes and pull out your hair like Bluehost will. Trust me (and the experts above) on this one.
If you’re still not convinced, I’ll end this post with one more of the thousands of gripes online about Bluehost:
